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This special issue of the ½¿É«µ¼º½ Blog introduces research-informed articles addressing teachers’ work and wellbeing across seven national/regional education systems: Scotland; England; Wales; Ireland; Alberta (Canada); Tennessee (US); and Victoria (Australia). Contributors include educational researchers and teacher association officials, offering diverse perspectives on common challenges affecting education systems across these regions.

Teacher supply internationally faces a critical juncture, with falling recruitment and rising attrition endangering educational capacity. In Scotland, 80 per cent of surveyed teachers reported contemplating leaving within the last two years. In Victoria, only 31 per cent of education staff intend to remain beyond 10 years. In Alberta, at least one-third of teachers are considering leaving the profession; while in Wales, numbers leaving the profession nearly tripled between 2020 and 2023 with 71.8 per cent leaving before retirement age. The collapse in leadership pipelines is particularly concerning, with Scotland reporting the proportion of depute^[1] heads keen to become headteachers falling from 35.7 per cent in 2016 to just 14.6 per cent in 2024.

‘Teacher supply internationally faces a critical juncture, with falling recruitment and rising attrition endangering educational capacity.’

Across all contexts, workload intensification emerges as a primary driver of teacher attrition. This concept transcends simple time metrics to encompass increased volume, escalating task complexity without corresponding resources, declining professional autonomy and proliferation of administrative requirements with limited educational value. Challenges extend beyond working time to include emotional, intellectual, ethical and work intensity demands that combine to create unsustainable pressure on educators. In Tennessee, where 92.3 per cent of teachers identified workload as the most challenging issue in schools, educators face additional uncertainty due to recent federal administrative changes.

A striking commonality is the increasing complexity of student needs coupled with diminishing specialist support. In England, teachers report ‘a significant increase post-pandemic in pupils diagnosed with special educational needs’ alongside ‘an overall decline in pupil mental health’. As Hulme et al. and Dempster’s posts reveal, in Scotland, access to specialist support for language and communication, social-emotional development and neurodiversity has diminished; while school leaders note that although 40.5 per cent of pupils have additional support needs, they feel ‘unable to provide the necessary support’.

The most profound insight emerging across the contributions in this special issue is that the crisis extends beyond excessive workload into moral injury – harm caused when educators cannot fulfil ethical purposes due to systemic constraints. Framed within moral distress theory, this phenomenon explains the values conflict that is experienced when professional expectations cannot be realised. In Victoria, researchers highlight a disconnect between the tasks teachers are required to perform and the ethical and moral principles that inform their professional practice. While Adamson et al.’s post reveals how teachers in England have described ‘the impact of being in an impossible situation, often leading to feelings of helplessness and guilt’. In Scotland, researchers use the concept of moral distress to explain the conflict teachers experience when they’re unable to act according to their ethical judgment (Hulme et al. post). As Diamond et al.’s post explains, this manifests in conflicts between care teachers’ wish to extend versus what’s possible with limited resources; educational aims versus market-driven priorities; and professional responsibilities versus personal wellbeing.

Methodological approaches vary across the contributions in this special issue. Mixed-methods designs were employed by Hulme et al. in Scotland’s Teacher Workload Research Project, combining time-use diaries with in-depth interviews, while Diamond et al. paired surveys with semi-structured interviews in Victoria, Australia. Also in Victoria, Longmuir et al. used large-scale surveys to reach 8,000 teachers, school leaders and education support staff; while the same method was used by Arnold and Rahimi to reach 1,117 Irish primary school leaders. Dempster conducted longitudinal analysis to track workload trends among promoted teachers in Scotland between 2016 and 2024. In England, Adamson et al. introduced innovative ecology mapping with 100 teachers to identify wellbeing factors. Elsewhere, Everitt explored attrition factors in Alberta, Canada through targeted exit interviews with departing educators.

Theoretical frameworks underpinning these approaches include Job Demands–Resources theory, moral distress theory and ecological models of resilience, providing complementary lenses through which to understand the complex dynamics of teacher wellbeing.

This collection of blog posts demonstrates remarkable consistency in findings across diverse international contexts. The challenges facing teachers transcend national boundaries. The contributions collectively reject framing teacher wellbeing as primarily a matter of personal resilience or coping strategies. Instead, they advocate reframing wellbeing as a structural phenomenon requiring systemic response.

The future vitality of education systems depends on addressing fundamental contradictions between the professional expectations placed on teachers and what is structurally possible within current resource constraints and policy frameworks. Only by reconciling these tensions can we create environments where teachers can thrive professionally while maintaining wellbeing necessary for career longevity and effectiveness.

[1] Depute is the standard spelling for the role of deputy head/assistant principal in Scotland.